Recent years have witnessed a significant increase in digital photography, particularly with the improvements and availability of digital cameras on mobile devices. Indeed, both hardware and software advances allow for incorporation of digital cameras within a large number of mobile computing devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and wearable devices. For instance, conventional digital photography systems now allow users to capture, modify, and utilize digital photographs in a variety of different contexts.
Notwithstanding these improvements, digital photography systems still have a number of significant shortcomings, particularly with respect to artistic photographs. For example, mobile devices often perform poorly when capturing long exposure photographs. In particular, mobile devices often lack the physical components (e.g., lenses, advanced sensors, and additional hardware) needed to capture clean, high-quality long exposure photographs, such as those captured using professional-grade cameras (e.g., DSLR cameras). In addition, many parameters and settings for capturing long exposure photographs, such as changing the ISO, shutter speed, or aperture, are limited or unavailable on many mobile devices.
Although some conventional digital photography systems operate on mobile devices and capture long exposure photographs, these conventional systems often produce inaccurate, blurry, and unsatisfactory results. Indeed, the slightest hand movement of the mobile device during a long exposure capture can distort the photograph. Thus, to achieve an acceptable long exposure photograph, an individual may have to use additional hardware, such as a tripod and a remote trigger. Unfortunately, this additional equipment is bulky, expensive, and often inaccessible to individuals when photograph opportunities arise.
To overcome these issues, some conventional systems have attempted to create long exposure photographs on mobile devices from still photographs. These conventional systems require an individual to capture a sequence of images. Based on the sequence of images, these systems create a long exposure photograph. Even these systems, however, suffer from a variety of problems. For example, in many instances, these conventional systems still require an individual to use a tripod (or other cumbersome equipment) while capturing images to obtain satisfactory results.
Moreover, these conventional systems often generate unrealistic, inaccurate long exposure photographs. Indeed, long exposure photographs generated by conventional systems often include noticeable artifacts (e.g., fail to provide a smooth trail for objects in motion across the digital images). For example, some conventional systems average frames from digital images captured in burst mode to generate long exposure photographs. This approach, however, causes the long exposure photograph to include unnatural pixel movements and textures (e.g., as a result of time gap between the captured images). These quality issues are often exacerbated when a moving object portrayed in the long exposure photograph is moving at high speeds.
In addition to problems with accuracy, conventional systems are also inflexible. For instance, in combining digital images, some conventional systems cannot adjust exposure settings. To illustrate, certain conventional systems cannot provide selection options for modifying length of long exposure capture. Similarly, many conventional systems require a specific output format (e.g., JPEG), which limits flexibility in utilizing the resulting long exposure image.
These shortcomings of conventional systems cause many photographers to utilize conventional cameras. However, in addition to the equipment problems discussed above, cameras have a number of problems in flexibility and functionality. For example, DSLR cameras require very specific conditions and lighting functions to capture particular types of long exposure photographs. For example, in order to create a long exposure photograph with an emphasized end-frame (i.e., rear-sync flash effect), conventional systems require the photographer to use a bright flash that can illuminate the object/scene reflected in the long exposure photograph. Accordingly, conventional systems can only generate a rear-sync flash long exposure image if the main subject is close enough to the camera to be lit by the flash (and in a relatively dark scene). Similarly, to create a digital image with light-painting effects, conventional cameras require a high-contrast in brightness (e.g., between a bright light and dark surrounding environment). Accordingly, conventional systems cannot generate a light-painting effect in an environment with background lighting or a light source that is not exceptionally bright.
These along with additional problems and issues exist with regard to generating realistic long exposure photographs.